Lots of people will view this as a sellout, but it isn't. The primarly difference between ESR and RMS is that ESR is pragmatic, and RMS is 100% principled and doesn't allow his principles to be modified by pragmatism.
ESR's stance is that the end (more openness -- and that means more Freedom, too) justifies the means (deal with more proprietary software now).
Lots of people will also claim that there is danger of a slippery slope here, that if we allow *any* proprietary software, then we won't know where to stop. I simply don't think that's true. As Linux increasingly dominates the marketplace and the world wakes up and realizes that Software Freedom just makes more sense, then we'll see a shift away from the new-old way of doing things. (The old-old way was when code was delivered to the customer with the compiled executable(s).)
I believe we'll see the same sort of progress in DRM and music/movie/etc. copyrights and the related P2P battles. As artists wake up and realize that the Internet enables them to survive in a different way than the current studio systems allow, many of these issues will morph and the current battles will go away. Why do you need a studio pushing your single in stores and on radio when the Internet can simply bypass these traditional advertising means and 'Net-based word-of-mouse advertizing can do all of/most of the work?
Of course, these processes will take years, and I think Linux-on-the-desktop will be the first one to see significant progress.
Especially if the community heeds ESR's advice now.
The content of a patent application isn't protected until the patent is approved. Submitting your patent application to a public site lets all your competition know details of what you're doing with absolutely no guarantee that you'll get patent protection of your idea(s).
I must be missing something, because this seems so obvious and insurmountable.
Here we go. The hipocracy of Slashdot at it's worst. First you decry the stupid copyright laws and how companies are abusing their power. Then people get caught, and you act all righteous and say, "Oh, well they shouldn't have been doing that. They got what they deserve." And you get modded up. You can't claim that laws are unfair, and then say that people deserve the punishment that those laws lay out. In a legal sense, yes they "deserve" it, but in a logical one, no.
I never said that all copyright laws were stupid. Your objection therefore has no merit; it is also uncharitable, of course.
Wait, you'd actually prefer to have the RIAA suing millions of people than have DRM?
No; that's not what I wrote. I would rather have those standard, old copyright laws enforced than have legally backedDRM. I don't care if we have DRM, as long as I'm not legally restricted from bypassing it for legitimate, legal reasons such as fair use (including personal backups, time & space shifting, etc.).
I want current copyright law to be enforced for two primary reasons:
casual copyright violaters will clean up their acts, diminishing the copyright holders' claims to damage, and making it more difficult for them to talk governments into additional DRM-backing laws
The People will be better able to recognize the unreasonableness of current laws and begin to demand that exceptions for Fair Use be included in all copyright-related laws
Civilly enforcing? Raiding someone's home for copyright violations seems a little extreme. Maybe if they were selling the songs commercially they'd have a reason to do that, but for non-commercial filesharing that's a bit over the top.
You're right. I posted too quickly, primarily to make the point that enforcing regular old copyright law is better than creating new DRM-backing laws.
Also, do you really think if everyone stopped pirating that we'd get better deals for music?
No again, and that's not related to the point I'm trying to make.
This is excellent news. The IP rights-holders appear to be responsibly investigating the actions of people violating copyright law.
I'd rather have a million more Jane Doe lawsuits and investigations like this one before DRM achieves greater legal backing than (in the United States, anyway) the DMCA already gives it.
Copyright holders have always had the right to take legal action against copyright violators, but they made a tactical error when they chose to fight Napster instead of the users, and when they attempt to pass laws instead of civilly enforcing existing laws.
BS. Any changes this man made to this code still belong to him, and he has the choice to keep them (in all forms - binary, source, whatever) to himself or to release them under the GPL.
The only thing that he can be forced to do if he violates the GPL is stop redistributing GPLed software whose source he copied.
Even worse, your ideological claims are more harmful BS. The GPL is not "communist", because it does not force anyone who doesn't want to share to share. It's a share-and-share-alike system. If you want to use my code, that's fine, but you have to let me use your code.
If you don't want to share your code, Mr. Business owner, please take your editor and go home. Keep yourself away from the copyrighted property of the thousands of people around the world who *do* want to share the fruits of their labor for the common good. And don't let me stop you from writing your own code to distribute as you like. See? Not communism. There is no "black market", just a "proprietary market". It's not illegal, it's just inferior in several ways.
Further, the GPL fosters competition. The bazaar model of software engineering depends on it. If your code sucks, your software sucks, and it will not win community acceptance. Again, the key idea here is that no one is forced into anything. There is no piece of software that is *mandated*; you choose what you want. Not communist.
Also, your complaint is centered on a dated and fading business model that depends directly on the sale of software. That market will simply continue to decrease until the point at which it is in balance with the demand for proprietary software (which will probably always exist). Stop selling software and sell customer solutions/support. If you do that, you don't even need to strain to come up with a continuous cash-flow business model, because *of course* service contracts need to be renewed every year, while people really don't like the idea of renewing "software licenses" on a yearly basis.
I assume nobody else responded to your comment because the "GPL IS VIRAL" whine is old and so often disproved.
> The GPL requires release of the code only to the > customer who pays you for it.
Totally wrong.
Payment has nothing to do with it.
Here is the beginning of section 3 of the GPL: ----- 3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:
* a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
* b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
* c) Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer to distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you received the program in object code or executable form with such an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.) ----- IANAL, but as I read this, the issue is simply distribution - of the executable or object-code. You can download Linux, write a new scheduler, and release only part of your scheduling code, and that's fine under the GPL until you "distribute" a binary of your modified kernel. Then you are required to release the source.
Also, one of the replies to the parent claims that Netgear was "forced to release changes to the Linux kernel". Once again, the GPL cannot force anyone to release his/her code. The GPL is a *license*, not a contract, and it stipulates requirements for use of code licensed under it.
If company Foo is violating the GPL by releasing modified binaries of GPL code without releasing the source, company Foo can resolve this in at least two different ways:
1. release the source code 2. stop using the GPL code
If they opt for #2, it is likely they can be forced by the courts to pay a fee to the copyright holder (which is frequently the FSF).
The GPL is *not* enforceably viral - violators can always choose option #2.
I think TheOpenCD is a tremendous evangelism tool, because it meets the newbies where they are. Without forcing them to learn what an Operating System is, without making them install one, and without making them learn all-new apps all at once, it gently introduces them to some great FOSS apps. The CD automatically runs a program that browses the applications available on the disc, and it includes categories and helpful descriptions of the applications. It even has essays by RMS and ESR.
Full Disclosure: I'm co-founding Software Freedom Day (http://softwarefreedomday.org/) with the maintainers of TheOpenCD project.
In regard to the fear of false positives - I'm getting false positives from myself; I've missed several important emails because my inbox was so stuffed with trash I couldn't scan through it to see the stuff that was actually important. Just now, I almost trashed an important email about a bachelor party for a friend who's getting married, because it came from another of his friends (whom I barely know), and the subject just says "Bachelor Party".
If I can put into place an automated solution that helps me miss less email, that will be better than what I have now. (I know I can - I'll probably use a Bayesian filter. I just haven't done it yet.)
My non-technical family has been running Red Hat for 2 years now, with good success. I actually taught my mom how to run a "dialup" script that I wrote, and she can connect to the Internet just fine.
They actually have two computers: a Win98 box and the RH box. The RH box is running SAMBA, and when each of my family members logs into his/her account on the Win98 side, his/her userspace is automatically mounted as drive X: (or something).
They have OpenOffice and Firebird on both machines.
Just this past Christmas, I upgraded my in-laws from W2K to Mandrake 9.2. They've been having a grand time (the games are a real winner), except that just today Evolution started giving them problems when they try to send mail.
My family has a hardware modem that I bought specifically for them, and they use wvdial in RH 9.0 (now). My in-laws have a winmodem that we bought (gasp!) a driver for from linuxant.com. I must admit, KPPP is very nice, and it beats my dialup script any day.:)
I'm planning to switch my family from GNOME/RH 9.0 to Mandrake/KDE next time I'm out there. I hadn't tried Mandrake until just before Christmas, but I must admit that I now recommend it as the best choice for my non-technical friends & relatives.
I recently installed Mandrake 9.2 on another friend's machine, and so far she's doing fine, too.
In fact, as I type I'm working on a laptop to send to my Dad. I've got Mandrake 9.2 on it and configured nicely (with Quasar, Firebird, and Acroread installed), but I just joined the Mandrake club so I can put 10.0 on it instead.
My experience has been that if you make sure people can do the things they want to do (i.e., not run MS Flight Sim, but email, surf the Web, word processes, etc.), and those people are willing to learn something new (or don't know any better), they can do just fine with something like Mandrake.
I've also started demonstrating Linux for people using MandrakeMove (KNOPPIX would work as well, I'm sure, but I haven't tried it yet). It's great to be able to pop in a CD, tell them none of their data is being touched, tell them a "real installation would be faster", and see how impressed they are.
Short of pushing someone all the way to Linux, I think the next best thing is to give them something like TheOpenCD.
Nah, the document says "...provide the releases of AIX and Dynix...Following this production, SCO is to provide _additional_ memoranda to the court indicating if and how these files support its position and how they are relevant."
The "additional" memoranda are in addition to the "specific lines of code that IBm is alleged to have contributed to Linux from either AIX or Dynix", "specific lines of code from Unix System V from which IBm's contributions from AIX or Dynix are alleged to be derived", and "all lines of code in Linux that it claims rights to". SCO still has to produce the first stuff without any additional input from IBM.
More exciting is SCO's last order: "SCO is to provide and identify with specificity the lines of code that SCO distributed to other parties. This is to include where applicable the conditions of release, to whom the code was released, the date and under what circumstances such code was released."
I've downloaded _MY_ GPLed Linux kernel source from SCO. Have you?
...but sometimes low bandwidth and high latency help to encourage more careful thinking, resulting in higher quality.
Compare the quality of thought in the average email today (ignoring the ones about your P3N15) to the average handwritten letter, and you'll see what I mean.
I think the above post about how the mind wanders is apropos; I don't think I want just *everything* from my mind able to fall right out without some sort of filter, and the fingers and the keyboard make a pretty decent filter.
Perhaps more importantly, I don't want to have to see all the junk that spills out of somebody *else's* mind when they have Brain Broadband.
Why is there all this fuss about finding a good vendor for electronic voting? The problem has already been solved in open source - we should use Slashdot polls. CowboyNeal for president, anyone?
This sounds like a brilliant idea to me. I have a friend who theorizes that the function of technology is always to "remove the middle" somehow, and it's easy to see how the Internet "removes the middle" of the commerce chain, by more directly linking buyers and sellers.
Sure, there may be a loss of quaintness, but if the gain is that more people are getting books they want at prices they like, and libraries are getting more money to get new materials, who's really loosing out?
I've got a wheelbarrow-full of musty old books I bought at a library sale, if anybody's bidding...
No, T.120 support is not implemented in GnomeMeeting yet. We prefer to focus on videoconferencing features and protocols than to add support for T.120. Moreover, most T.120 features like desktop sharing, or file transferts can be easily achieved using other dedicated tools.
Though it is the "official network meeting software" where I work, nobody I know uses Netmeeting for anything other than sharing their applications and/or desktops while everyone is in a conference call. (I think this is silly - sometimes we even use separate videoconferencing as well.)
Unfortunately, this one thing that I need Gnomemeeting to do is the one thing that it doesn't do. Lately I've been using rdesktop (http://www.rdesktop.org/) to connect to our W2K Terminal Servers, and I run Netmeeting from there. Works like as much of a charm as possible, given that I'm forced to use MS software...
Like/.! If there were only a miniscule tax on Slashdot posts... (then this one wouldn't be here).
Seriously, how could this ever be implemented? Who's going to track who sends how many emails, and to where? Furthermore, the logical spaces of the Internet don't correspond very well (at this time) to physical spaces in the world. Do you have to pay export taxes if you're emailing someone overseas? Do you have to pay import taxes to receive an overseas email? Will it cost more to email someone "further away" from you?
How would this tax apply to *my* email server?
How do we even define "email"? Would this apply to messages sent to a different port, or a different protocol? If we do, then where do we draw the line?
In the end, taxing one type of Internet communication differently from any other type doesn't make sense. If all that's moving are logical bits, then distinguishing between the types of bits for taxation purposes seems silly. Either tax bandwidth usage, or don't, but don't tax only some.
Now, if there is $$ changing hands, taxation at least makes sense, even if you don't like it. If something other than bits is being moved (whether it's money or some other type of property), then taxation starts to make a lot more sense.
I also worked on JACAL at Taylor University (www.css.tayloru.edu).
Here are a few more details about the system:
The Linux installation runs and completes first, without requiring any reboots, of course. Then the Windows installation proceeds, automatically rebooting and continuing several times.
To start the JACAL process, the administrator only needs to input the hostname of the workstation, and select two or three menu options having to do with partitioning and whether the machine is to single-boot (Linux or Windows) or dual-boot.
Linux Installation:
We had a "base" Red Hat installation shared via NFS to the JACAL workstations (that is, workstations currently going through the JACAL install process), and this installation was rsynced to each installation target, where hardware detection and the admin-entered hostname were used to customize certain files. The rest was cake.
Windows Installation:
The real work was here, of course.:) To get the installation files, we let a Windows installation progress to the point where it starts paying attention to what hardware is on the system (that would be the second or third reboot, IIRC). We powered off the machine at that point and used 'dd' to grab the boot partition of the drive, and made a tarball of all the files on the Windows partition.
After a lot of guesswork, trials, and errors, we developed a short script that knows which bits of the Windows boot partition are machine-independent, so for each workstation going through the JACAL process, JACAL un-tars the tarball onto the newly formatted (fat32) partition and copies the bits it will need to boot and continue the Windows installation. It also copies a chain of Perl scripts into the c:\temp folder. Then it reboots, and for the rest of the JACAL process the machine is running Windows.
Using the RunOnce registry key, we started a Perl script that used sysdiff (and other various things) to install applications hosted on a SAMBA share. That perl script would then set RunOnce to run the next perl script, and then reboot. The next perl script would install the video driver, set RunOnce again, and reboot. The next one did some substitutions in c:\winnt\system.ini (or something like that) to enable SMP, and rebooted. Etc.
Since I was there I know they've updated the entire applications installation process (SysDiff can't do *everything*), and they're running XP now instead of NT 4.0.
I know that we were interested in making this more of an open-source project while I was there, but getting Windows to install this easily takes quite a bit of work to implement; there's no easy way to just pack up an all-inclusive tarball and send it off to somebody else, especially since a lot of the essential pieces are copies of non-free software packages. But I know that JACAL saves Taylor's CompSci department hours and hours of clicking through dialog boxes each year. (Need to fix a machine's configuration? Just sit down with a JACAL bootdisk for 5 minutes and the problem is solved 45 minutes later!)
I think it would be great if more people could start to make use of the work that's been done, so it could be this easy for everyone.
The link to submit comments didn't work for me, so I emailed ecfshelp2@fcc.gov, and got this link, where I just submitted my comment: http://gullfoss2.fcc.gov/prod/ecfs/upload_v2.cgi
Netcraft's Septemeber web survey reports that 67.28% of websites run Apache, while 24.44% run a MS server. (Keep in mind that some of those Apache servers are not running Linux.)
The article cites hacking rates of 67% to 23.2%. It does look like MS is coming out ahead here, but not by too much.
Slashdot Mirror
Lots of people will view this as a sellout, but it isn't. The primarly difference between ESR and RMS is that ESR is pragmatic, and RMS is 100% principled and doesn't allow his principles to be modified by pragmatism.
ESR's stance is that the end (more openness -- and that means more Freedom, too) justifies the means (deal with more proprietary software now).
Lots of people will also claim that there is danger of a slippery slope here, that if we allow *any* proprietary software, then we won't know where to stop. I simply don't think that's true. As Linux increasingly dominates the marketplace and the world wakes up and realizes that Software Freedom just makes more sense, then we'll see a shift away from the new-old way of doing things. (The old-old way was when code was delivered to the customer with the compiled executable(s).)
I believe we'll see the same sort of progress in DRM and music/movie/etc. copyrights and the related P2P battles. As artists wake up and realize that the Internet enables them to survive in a different way than the current studio systems allow, many of these issues will morph and the current battles will go away. Why do you need a studio pushing your single in stores and on radio when the Internet can simply bypass these traditional advertising means and 'Net-based word-of-mouse advertizing can do all of/most of the work?
Of course, these processes will take years, and I think Linux-on-the-desktop will be the first one to see significant progress.
Especially if the community heeds ESR's advice now.
The content of a patent application isn't protected until the patent is approved. Submitting your patent application to a public site lets all your competition know details of what you're doing with absolutely no guarantee that you'll get patent protection of your idea(s).
I must be missing something, because this seems so obvious and insurmountable.
I never said that all copyright laws were stupid. Your objection therefore has no merit; it is also uncharitable, of course.
Wait, you'd actually prefer to have the RIAA suing millions of people than have DRM?
No; that's not what I wrote. I would rather have those standard, old copyright laws enforced than have legally backedDRM. I don't care if we have DRM, as long as I'm not legally restricted from bypassing it for legitimate, legal reasons such as fair use (including personal backups, time & space shifting, etc.).
I want current copyright law to be enforced for two primary reasons:
Civilly enforcing? Raiding someone's home for copyright violations seems a little extreme. Maybe if they were selling the songs commercially they'd have a reason to do that, but for non-commercial filesharing that's a bit over the top.
You're right. I posted too quickly, primarily to make the point that enforcing regular old copyright law is better than creating new DRM-backing laws.
Also, do you really think if everyone stopped pirating that we'd get better deals for music?
No again, and that's not related to the point I'm trying to make.
This is excellent news. The IP rights-holders appear to be responsibly investigating the actions of people violating copyright law.
I'd rather have a million more Jane Doe lawsuits and investigations like this one before DRM achieves greater legal backing than (in the United States, anyway) the DMCA already gives it.
Copyright holders have always had the right to take legal action against copyright violators, but they made a tactical error when they chose to fight Napster instead of the users, and when they attempt to pass laws instead of civilly enforcing existing laws.
BS. Any changes this man made to this code still belong to him, and he has the choice to keep them (in all forms - binary, source, whatever) to himself or to release them under the GPL.
The only thing that he can be forced to do if he violates the GPL is stop redistributing GPLed software whose source he copied.
Even worse, your ideological claims are more harmful BS. The GPL is not "communist", because it does not force anyone who doesn't want to share to share. It's a share-and-share-alike system. If you want to use my code, that's fine, but you have to let me use your code.
If you don't want to share your code, Mr. Business owner, please take your editor and go home. Keep yourself away from the copyrighted property of the thousands of people around the world who *do* want to share the fruits of their labor for the common good. And don't let me stop you from writing your own code to distribute as you like. See? Not communism. There is no "black market", just a "proprietary market". It's not illegal, it's just inferior in several ways.
Further, the GPL fosters competition. The bazaar model of software engineering depends on it. If your code sucks, your software sucks, and it will not win community acceptance. Again, the key idea here is that no one is forced into anything. There is no piece of software that is *mandated*; you choose what you want. Not communist.
Also, your complaint is centered on a dated and fading business model that depends directly on the sale of software. That market will simply continue to decrease until the point at which it is in balance with the demand for proprietary software (which will probably always exist). Stop selling software and sell customer solutions/support. If you do that, you don't even need to strain to come up with a continuous cash-flow business model, because *of course* service contracts need to be renewed every year, while people really don't like the idea of renewing "software licenses" on a yearly basis.
I assume nobody else responded to your comment because the "GPL IS VIRAL" whine is old and so often disproved.
But I couldn't help myself, so there you go.
> The GPL requires release of the code only to the
> customer who pays you for it.
Totally wrong.
Payment has nothing to do with it.
Here is the beginning of section 3 of the GPL:
-----
3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:
* a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
* b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
* c) Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer to distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you received the program in object code or executable form with such an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.)
-----
IANAL, but as I read this, the issue is simply distribution - of the executable or object-code. You can download Linux, write a new scheduler, and release only part of your scheduling code, and that's fine under the GPL until you "distribute" a binary of your modified kernel. Then you are required to release the source.
Also, one of the replies to the parent claims that Netgear was "forced to release changes to the Linux kernel". Once again, the GPL cannot force anyone to release his/her code. The GPL is a *license*, not a contract, and it stipulates requirements for use of code licensed under it.
If company Foo is violating the GPL by releasing modified binaries of GPL code without releasing the source, company Foo can resolve this in at least two different ways:
1. release the source code
2. stop using the GPL code
If they opt for #2, it is likely they can be forced by the courts to pay a fee to the copyright holder (which is frequently the FSF).
The GPL is *not* enforceably viral - violators can always choose option #2.
the prince finger you.
http://theopencd.org
I think TheOpenCD is a tremendous evangelism tool, because it meets the newbies where they are. Without forcing them to learn what an Operating System is, without making them install one, and without making them learn all-new apps all at once, it gently introduces them to some great FOSS apps. The CD automatically runs a program that browses the applications available on the disc, and it includes categories and helpful descriptions of the applications. It even has essays by RMS and ESR.
Full Disclosure: I'm co-founding Software Freedom Day (http://softwarefreedomday.org/) with the maintainers of TheOpenCD project.
In regard to the fear of false positives - I'm getting false positives from myself; I've missed several important emails because my inbox was so stuffed with trash I couldn't scan through it to see the stuff that was actually important. Just now, I almost trashed an important email about a bachelor party for a friend who's getting married, because it came from another of his friends (whom I barely know), and the subject just says "Bachelor Party".
If I can put into place an automated solution that helps me miss less email, that will be better than what I have now. (I know I can - I'll probably use a Bayesian filter. I just haven't done it yet.)
My non-technical family has been running Red Hat for 2 years now, with good success. I actually taught my mom how to run a "dialup" script that I wrote, and she can connect to the Internet just fine.
:)
They actually have two computers: a Win98 box and the RH box. The RH box is running SAMBA, and when each of my family members logs into his/her account on the Win98 side, his/her userspace is automatically mounted as drive X: (or something).
They have OpenOffice and Firebird on both machines.
Just this past Christmas, I upgraded my in-laws from W2K to Mandrake 9.2. They've been having a grand time (the games are a real winner), except that just today Evolution started giving them problems when they try to send mail.
My family has a hardware modem that I bought specifically for them, and they use wvdial in RH 9.0 (now). My in-laws have a winmodem that we bought (gasp!) a driver for from linuxant.com. I must admit, KPPP is very nice, and it beats my dialup script any day.
I'm planning to switch my family from GNOME/RH 9.0 to Mandrake/KDE next time I'm out there. I hadn't tried Mandrake until just before Christmas, but I must admit that I now recommend it as the best choice for my non-technical friends & relatives.
I recently installed Mandrake 9.2 on another friend's machine, and so far she's doing fine, too.
In fact, as I type I'm working on a laptop to send to my Dad. I've got Mandrake 9.2 on it and configured nicely (with Quasar, Firebird, and Acroread installed), but I just joined the Mandrake club so I can put 10.0 on it instead.
My experience has been that if you make sure people can do the things they want to do (i.e., not run MS Flight Sim, but email, surf the Web, word processes, etc.), and those people are willing to learn something new (or don't know any better), they can do just fine with something like Mandrake.
I've also started demonstrating Linux for people using MandrakeMove (KNOPPIX would work as well, I'm sure, but I haven't tried it yet). It's great to be able to pop in a CD, tell them none of their data is being touched, tell them a "real installation would be faster", and see how impressed they are.
Short of pushing someone all the way to Linux, I think the next best thing is to give them something like TheOpenCD.
</rambling>
Nah, the document says "...provide the releases of AIX and Dynix...Following this production, SCO is to provide _additional_ memoranda to the court indicating if and how these files support its position and how they are relevant."
The "additional" memoranda are in addition to the "specific lines of code that IBm is alleged to have contributed to Linux from either AIX or Dynix", "specific lines of code from Unix System V from which IBm's contributions from AIX or Dynix are alleged to be derived", and "all lines of code in Linux that it claims rights to". SCO still has to produce the first stuff without any additional input from IBM.
More exciting is SCO's last order:
"SCO is to provide and identify with specificity the lines of code that SCO distributed to other parties. This is to include where applicable the conditions of release, to whom the code was released, the date and under what circumstances such code was released."
I've downloaded _MY_ GPLed Linux kernel source from SCO. Have you?
such as Gkrellm, which is available for Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS X, Net BSD, OpenBSD, Solaris, and Windows... if you install gtk, gdk, glib, etc.
But a cheap hardware solution *is* pretty cool.
Now, if you could hook one of those Duracell indicators up to your date for the evening...
Windows CE would definitely have been a better choice. That way, MS could have an automatic monopoly on Mars, too.
...but sometimes low bandwidth and high latency help to encourage more careful thinking, resulting in higher quality.
Compare the quality of thought in the average email today (ignoring the ones about your P3N15) to the average handwritten letter, and you'll see what I mean.
I think the above post about how the mind wanders is apropos; I don't think I want just *everything* from my mind able to fall right out without some sort of filter, and the fingers and the keyboard make a pretty decent filter.
Perhaps more importantly, I don't want to have to see all the junk that spills out of somebody *else's* mind when they have Brain Broadband.
I can moon mars from my backyard.
I know people who've been using Java desktops for years, though usually people wipe it up before too long.
Why is there all this fuss about finding a good vendor for electronic voting? The problem has already been solved in open source - we should use Slashdot polls. CowboyNeal for president, anyone?
This sounds like a brilliant idea to me. I have a friend who theorizes that the function of technology is always to "remove the middle" somehow, and it's easy to see how the Internet "removes the middle" of the commerce chain, by more directly linking buyers and sellers.
Sure, there may be a loss of quaintness, but if the gain is that more people are getting books they want at prices they like, and libraries are getting more money to get new materials, who's really loosing out?
I've got a wheelbarrow-full of musty old books I bought at a library sale, if anybody's bidding...
Another important point from their FAQ is
2.8. Does it support the T.120 protocol?
No, T.120 support is not implemented in GnomeMeeting yet. We prefer to focus on videoconferencing features and protocols than to add support for T.120. Moreover, most T.120 features like desktop sharing, or file transferts can be easily achieved using other dedicated tools.
Though it is the "official network meeting software" where I work, nobody I know uses Netmeeting for anything other than sharing their applications and/or desktops while everyone is in a conference call. (I think this is silly - sometimes we even use separate videoconferencing as well.)
Unfortunately, this one thing that I need Gnomemeeting to do is the one thing that it doesn't do. Lately I've been using rdesktop (http://www.rdesktop.org/) to connect to our W2K Terminal Servers, and I run Netmeeting from there. Works like as much of a charm as possible, given that I'm forced to use MS software...
Like /.! If there were only a miniscule tax on Slashdot posts... (then this one wouldn't be here).
Seriously, how could this ever be implemented? Who's going to track who sends how many emails, and to where? Furthermore, the logical spaces of the Internet don't correspond very well (at this time) to physical spaces in the world. Do you have to pay export taxes if you're emailing someone overseas? Do you have to pay import taxes to receive an overseas email? Will it cost more to email someone "further away" from you?
How would this tax apply to *my* email server?
How do we even define "email"? Would this apply to messages sent to a different port, or a different protocol? If we do, then where do we draw the line?
In the end, taxing one type of Internet communication differently from any other type doesn't make sense. If all that's moving are logical bits, then distinguishing between the types of bits for taxation purposes seems silly. Either tax bandwidth usage, or don't, but don't tax only some.
Now, if there is $$ changing hands, taxation at least makes sense, even if you don't like it. If something other than bits is being moved (whether it's money or some other type of property), then taxation starts to make a lot more sense.
I also worked on JACAL at Taylor University (www.css.tayloru.edu).
:)
Here are a few more details about the system:
The Linux installation runs and completes first, without requiring any reboots, of course. Then the Windows installation proceeds, automatically rebooting and continuing several times.
To start the JACAL process, the administrator only needs to input the hostname of the workstation, and select two or three menu options having to do with partitioning and whether the machine is to single-boot (Linux or Windows) or dual-boot.
Linux Installation:
We had a "base" Red Hat installation shared via NFS to the JACAL workstations (that is, workstations currently going through the JACAL install process), and this installation was rsynced to each installation target, where hardware detection and the admin-entered hostname were used to customize certain files. The rest was cake.
Windows Installation:
The real work was here, of course.
To get the installation files, we let a Windows installation progress to the point where it starts paying attention to what hardware is on the system (that would be the second or third reboot, IIRC). We powered off the machine at that point and used 'dd' to grab the boot partition of the drive, and made a tarball of all the files on the Windows partition.
After a lot of guesswork, trials, and errors, we developed a short script that knows which bits of the Windows boot partition are machine-independent, so for each workstation going through the JACAL process, JACAL un-tars the tarball onto the newly formatted (fat32) partition and copies the bits it will need to boot and continue the Windows installation. It also copies a chain of Perl scripts into the c:\temp folder. Then it reboots, and for the rest of the JACAL process the machine is running Windows.
Using the RunOnce registry key, we started a Perl script that used sysdiff (and other various things) to install applications hosted on a SAMBA share. That perl script would then set RunOnce to run the next perl script, and then reboot. The next perl script would install the video driver, set RunOnce again, and reboot. The next one did some substitutions in c:\winnt\system.ini (or something like that) to enable SMP, and rebooted. Etc.
Since I was there I know they've updated the entire applications installation process (SysDiff can't do *everything*), and they're running XP now instead of NT 4.0.
I know that we were interested in making this more of an open-source project while I was there, but getting Windows to install this easily takes quite a bit of work to implement; there's no easy way to just pack up an all-inclusive tarball and send it off to somebody else, especially since a lot of the essential pieces are copies of non-free software packages. But I know that JACAL saves Taylor's CompSci department hours and hours of clicking through dialog boxes each year. (Need to fix a machine's configuration? Just sit down with a JACAL bootdisk for 5 minutes and the problem is solved 45 minutes later!)
I think it would be great if more people could start to make use of the work that's been done, so it could be this easy for everyone.
> YOU FAIL IT!
Exactly.
First Post (TM). Patent pending... damn. I see evidence of prior art.
The link to submit comments didn't work for me, so I emailed ecfshelp2@fcc.gov, and got this link, where I just submitted my comment: http://gullfoss2.fcc.gov/prod/ecfs/upload_v2.cgi
Netcraft's Septemeber web survey reports that 67.28% of websites run Apache, while 24.44% run a MS server. (Keep in mind that some of those Apache servers are not running Linux.)
The article cites hacking rates of 67% to 23.2%. It does look like MS is coming out ahead here, but not by too much.